COUNTRY LIFE
The Extinct Fir The First has quite lost its old associations. Its importance in the sporting calendar began to wane with the arrival of the breech-loader and modern agricultural operations have done the rest. Even rootfields are now apt to be regarded as places out of which birds may be suitably driven, rather than a cover where they may be walked into. The date is too early for those who shoot under modern conditions : and though a good many birds fall during the first week, a great many :landowners postpone the partridge as they postpone the pheasant shoot a month later. This year the young birds are perhaps stronger on the wing than is usual and certainly in many districts they are in.larger coveys. The hatching was altogether exceptional. It has been dogmatically stated by the research-workers of Impetial Chemicals (who study the'. target for the sake of the explosive) that a pair cannot look after more thin twelve chicks ; but in fact we do see flourishing families a good deal larger. Partridges will lay on occasion over a score. of eggs and we have seen both parents sitting side by side on such a clutch. One covey of this year in my immediate neighbour- hood nunabers twenty-two in all : but it may well be doubted whether all are of one brood. Amalgamations are not unknown ; and there are examples of maiden aunts, or uncles, joining in the family circle. No bird in the whole list is so philopro- genitive or so devoted a parent.
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The Fickle Mushroom
A good many witnesses have come forward to corroborate the view that basic slag and other artificial fertilisers have had the unfortunate result of destroying the mushroom or at any rate in inhibiting its flowering, so to say. Mushrooms are very mysterious plants, in their appearances, and dis- appearances. Some sorts will keep their power of reproduction even after they have passed through the body of an animal. A common fungus that appears on pears is of this potency. The mycelium will lie doggo for unknown years and then of a sudden produce an immense crop and then return to its former state of negation. A few years ago I walked across a field of roots that had been treated with pig manure. The field had been under tillage for years and so far as the farmer knew ii was mushroomless. Then one year, and that only, it produced, I should say, tons of mushrooms, all of the sort that we call the mushrccm, to wit agaricus campestris. It was difficult to walk between the rows without treading on mushrooms of as great a size as the horse. mushroom. How fickle is the beautiful and most edible morel ; and with what a queer preference (in my experience) for gravel paths and hard tennis courts ! One of the very best mushroom fields I know has not produced a mushroom since the firm changed over from stock to poultry.
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Rejected Dainties
What a deal of good food, of very good food, is wasted ! The number of mushrooms that are poisonous is small and the number that are really excellent is large ; and they include a hard yellow ugly-looking species which grows on trees. This is a favourite with the Austrians, and indeed each country seems to have its particular favourites and prejudices. Britain is distinguished by its general rejection of all species but one or three at most. A good many horse mushrooms are eaten, not knowingly but because they are mixed up with others by the commercial pickers. In some parts of the country morels are regarded as a great luxury, as well they may be. The French peasant has a great liking for the so-called " fairy ring " mushroom or champignon proper which has the great advantage of not undergoing deliquescence as many mush- rooms do. When threaded on a string and dried it keeps its original cohesion and becomes a popular flavour for winter or spring stews. Wild salad plants abound but none of them, so far as I know, is in use, not even sorrel and dandelion leaves, though dandelion roots are in considerable demand. A delightful passage in an old writer gives a melancholy picture of a county about which crawl unregarded and unharvested great quantity of perfectly delicious and most wholesome snails !
Valley Preservation At the moment the most insistent cry for preservation comes from the North West : the famous Cock o' Lune is threatened. The lower reaches of that adorable river may be regarded as a passage from the most crowded urban district of the world to one of the most perfect examples of lake and hill country. To deface the narrowest part of this valley would be like making a villa of a cathedral porch. It would constitute Plato's " Sin in the soul." The Lune is perhaps most precious at the threatened point ; but it is difficult to decide just where it is loveliest. The' reach that stays Most clearly in my mind has above it a steep red sandstone cliff that in one place has been used as a rock garden; all the plants are bushes and trees to suit the magnitude of the site. The appeal of the National Trust and the C.P.R.E. for the £1,400 needed to save 5,000 acres of Eskdale is not more urgent than the case of the Lune generally speaking in that the duties of preservation of river valleys and the sea coast come first. They matter more than isolated beauty spots. As to the coast, there should of course be a national law prohibiting its desecration. Its protection is a duty lying quite outside the scope of any district council.
* * Antipode an Similitudes In the course of making research into the keeping of golf- greens some rather surprising comparisons of climate have been discovered. For example, in regard to New. Zealand, though it suffers. rather more than Britain from various plagues, such as earwigs and blackberries, it has just been pointed , out by a _particular group of research workers that its climate is singularly like the British in certain of its influences. If a grass flourishes or fails to flourish in England it will flourish or fail to flourish in New Zealand. The fact has been discovered by a comparison of the results obtained by the Green Research Committee at Bingley Hall, Yorkshire, and ,a similar body set up a little later for the same purpose in New Zealand. Exactly the same grasses become the golf-greens in both countries, and neither country has any use for the grasses that help the putters in Africa. There the favourite herb is Indian Doob or Bermuda Grass, but this goes brown and uncomely on English or New Zealand links. The trouble with New Zealand is that the climate and soil are rather too good. In the North Island the summer is rather warmer than ours and the winter rather milder, The result is that wadesirable plants, rejoicing in such condi- tions, are rather harder to keep under. For example, that pretty little weed, pearl-wort, which most lawn-keepers have noticed and perhaps adMired in isolated examples, assumes the status of a serious enemy on New Zealand greens. The whole enquiry gives a good example of the quaint scientific discoveries continually being made at Bingley Hall, which is now being supported by most of the golf clubs in the country, and should be supported by all.'
In the Garden
Most herbaceous borders are apt to become at this season rather dull and untidy stretches ; and henceforward they go from bad to worse. It happens that some of the plants which naturally flower very late do not consort with other flowers. For example that blue-pink sedum spectabile which so success- fully attracts the autumnal butterflies and moths will bear no colour in its neighbourhood. The reason perhaps is that redness of some sort is the prevailing colour of the later year and reds are hard to fit into a colour scheme. A glorious exception is the close juxtaposition of one of the late-flowering tritomas and the Bishop of Llandaff dahlia. I recently walked beside a glorious border of great length consisting wholly of bushes, and the brightest thing in it was a tamarisk or two. The bushes are cut down close each year and come into perfection of flower and grace of growth about this date. So treated they are quite hardy in inland places and avoid the " legginess " that is their chief deficiency when, like Topsy, they just grow. The date of flowering of a good many bush plants, for example, some of the brooms, may be altered by judicious pruning.
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